You’re nobody nowadays if you don’t belong to a movement with “ist” on the end of it.
In 1989, in my country Canada, you can be a pacifist, a conservationist, an activist, a feminist, an environmentalist, a unionist, an animal rightist, a pro- or an anti-abortionist, a (death penalty) abolitionist (or retentionist), a separatist, a moralist, a leftist, a humanist, a multiculturalist, an isolationist, a communist, a socialist, an atheist, a federalist or an economic nationalist.
You can be a combination or two or more of these things.
You could be a sports enthusiast, an artist or an agriculturalist.
But you might also be, unfortunately, a racist, a white supremacist, a materialist, a sexist, a chauvinist, an egotist or a bigamist. Even a political opportunist. Or a perfectionist.
Hopefully, a realist.
One way or another in this day and age, if you want proof that you do, in fact, exist, you better find yourself an ism to attach yourself to.
If none of the above categories appeals to you there are also the following special-interest groups which you can join and whose cause you can advance. They are less well known, it’s true, but they too are making their way into the public eye. They just need a little more exposure. That’s what I’m here for.
Try to imagine yourself as a:
1. Couch potatoist – an advocate for the rights of sofaholics, campaigning for an end to the ridicule they suffer, especially at the hands of newspaper reporters, standup comedians and toymakers;
2. Bugs Bunnyist – a fighter for the right to watch the original, uncut versions of the Warner Brothers cartoon classics, before all the bonks to the head and whammos to the backside were edited out for the sensitive children of the ’80s;
3. Inactivist – promoting the doing of absolutely nothing for periods of up to an hour, even longer;
4. Lack of exercisist – dedicated to getting nighttime joggers dressed in dark clothing off the streets and to having annoying Richard Simmons commercials banned from TV;
5. Lighten upist – fighting to restore fun to the lives of all the other “ists” who are taking the whole thing way too seriously;
6. Less educationist – dedicated to the concept that ignorance is bliss and what you don’t know can’t hurt you and to the goal of enjoying life more by being informed less;
7. Imperfectionist – calling for a reduction in the amount of quality time people spend and a general lowering of the pressures to do things really well;
8. Total unknownist – striving to lead an unpublicized life, completely unnoticed by the media;
9. Averagist – in search of second place;
10. Gone fishinist – committed to spending many free hours in pursuits which hold no socially redeeming value and which are guaranteed to bring no improvement to the lives of anyone, not even to your own.
I recommend any of the above groups, though I don’t actually belong to any of them myself. I don’t need to.
I’m a journalist.
And a columnist.
(Hopefully a humourist).
©1989 Jim Hagarty
